There’s a really useful word that’s been floating around in certain communities and I want to take a moment to help it spread.
Cisgender refers to people who experience and present their gender in a way that’s aligned with the sex of their body. It contrasts with transgender, which refers to people who experience their gender as different from the physical sex they were assigned at birth. Generally, transgender folks take various steps to bring them into closer alignment, such as wearing clothes of the gender they feel themselves to be, surgery, taking hormones, and having their legal name changed.
The word has been since at least 1994, although it has become more well-known since Julia Serrano’s book Whipping Girl came out. The prefix cis means “on the same side” while trans means “on the other side”. Cis and trans are used in chemistry to describe the structures of molecules and, of course, trans is used in a lot of words, such as transport (carry to the other side), transmit (send to the other side), and transcribe (to write in another place). My 10th grade Latin teacher would be glad to see that I remember such things.
The reason that the word cisgender is important to use is that it takes away the idea that being cisgender is “normal.” When we assume that man = cisgender man unless we use the term transgender, we reinforce the idea that cisgender people are normal and transgender people aren’t. Of course, being cisgender is more common but when we use language that reinforces the idea that more common equals normal, we marginalize people who are well within the range of diversity that exists in the world.
Cisgender is also a better term than bio-guy or bio-girl, which was in use for a while, because it shifts the focus from biology to gender. Similarly, the term genetic man isn’t really useful since most people haven’t been genetically tested and there’s no guarantee that someone who looks a certain way will necessarily have any particular genetics.
I’d love to see the word cisgender become used more widely. It’s a really useful concept and it serves a valuable purpose. Use it, pass it on, and help it spread.
I agree that it’s a useful term but I think there also needs to be a note… there is some controversy over the word cisgender being used because it was invented by the transgender community (one group) to describe non-trans folks. And when one group decides to label another group of folks w/o their consent or input, well, we’ve seen this happen plenty of times in the past with disastrous and offensive and prejudicial results. So some trans people are hoping/waiting for non-trans folks to come up with their own name for themselves.
Mary Kay(Quote) (Reply)
I get that many cisgender folks resent and resist being labeled without their consent. And yet, I would argue that many (certainly not all) cisgender folks already have a label that they use to describe themselves: normal.
One of the ways that privilege works is by rendering itself invisible in order to become the norm. Some examples of that: people of color have ethnicities while white people don’t. People are assumed to be heterosexual until an adjective like gay, dyke or queer is used. Most of us assume that someone is able-bodied or cisgender unless we hear otherwise. And let’s not forget that men are still considered the default by many people. (Not that I am advocating any of these positions. I’m simply pointing out that these are common attitudes in US society and elsewhere.)
One of the strategies for responding to this is to create language that describes the “normal” group and that language often comes from the outsiders, especially when the dominant group isn’t doing the work to come up with its own terminology. If cisgender people want to challenge that by creating new language, that’d be great. And so far, I haven’t seen or heard of any progress on that. I’ll continue to use the one word that exists to describe cisgender people until something better comes along.
And let’s bear in mind that the term “transgender” was imposed on people without their consent, as well. Not that I ever argue that two wrongs make a right, but if trans people can claim that term, then I see no reason that cis people can’t do the same.
Charlie(Quote) (Reply)